The User does not want backup …

… he wants restore instead. ...

Seldom I saw a truer programming advice. We technically minded of course know that you have to backup first to be able to restore but normal users don't see it that way. Normal users call you in the middle of the night “My essay for vocational school I worked on for 3 weeks has disappeared! Tomorrow is hand over! What can I do?” Like all technically minded my first return question was “Have you made a Backup?” – "Backup?!?!" Next I was sitting in front of her computer dragging the data of the system with a sector editor. That must have been 1985 or so.

I comment Apple to the Time Machine. That was long overdue. You can set up Time Machine and forget all about it. Until you need the all important restore.

I spend hours in viable backups/restore solutions when I was still using Linux desktops and none of those solutions where fit for normal users.

The same is true for your mobile phone. You can loose it, drop is and all your important data is gone. Some of your data has probably been synced to desktop but the rest will be gone. Including the apps you purchased. Still most mobile phones come without a backup solution.

Up until now only Symbian/UIQ had a build in backup solution. But it was a disaster:

• You have to trigger the backup manually :down: .
• It relied on cooperation with the application developers (most of which did not know about the importance adding a backup.xml file to the data directories). :down:
• the backup sets relied on registry entries and could therefore not easily moved from one desktop computer to the next. :down:
• the backup was tied to the phone itself (tough luck if you lost the phone). :down:
• Only full backup and full restores where possible. :down:
• Last not least: There was not a single reported case of a successful restore. Restore usually just crashed. And if it run through most files where still missing (see point 2 for the reason). :no:

I tell you alls this because with Android 2.2 «Frozen-Joghurt» Google finally finished the backup API. A bit late but better then a hasty release that does not work. And how does it work?

• I works automaticly :up:. You switch it on in the settings and your data is backup into The Cloud :confused:.
• It relies on cooperation with the application developers (this time it is a [/font]android.app.backup.BackupAgent java class) :down: – but at least Google documented the API at a prominent place. :yes:
• Restore to a new phone is supported :up:
• Restore happens automaticly after registering a new phone or a master reset :up: (so they say - could not test it).
• Single backup and restore is possible :up: but only with the debug shell :irked:.

The final question left: does it work? All I can say is that it works for the HP-45 Emulator. There is not much data to be lost in an calculator app but I would not have considered the app complete without participating in the operating systems backup and restore. The new version will be released later this day.